Today my friend Sarah, who's just finished residency to become a pediatrician in Texas, told me about a 15-year-old girl she knew from the hospital who needed a bone marrow transplant. Her condition was such that you could keep her alive for a while through frequent blood transplants, but this wasn't a permanent solution, and it raised the risk of her immune system rejecting the bone marrow if a transplant eventually did occur. She had lived in America since age 1, but since she was born in Mexico, she wasn't a citizen and was ineligible for Medicaid. Sarah said the girl's best option was to commit a crime and fall into the prison system. There was a chance she'd get deported, but there was also a fair chance the prison system would take care of her and give her the transplant.
I asked Sarah what became of the girl. She didn't know, but she said that the girl was probably dead by now.
6 comments:
Not to make this any more depressing, but even the prison system would be unlikely to save her.
In Texas, it's decently likely that the prison she'd be checked into after her arrest would have Secure Communities, which would identify her as undocumented. She'd then be transferred to an ICE detention facility, and those, um, don't have a great track record in terms of medical care: http://www.immigrationforum.org/blog/display/court-closes-door-for-lawsuits-to-hold-officials-accountable/#When:19:06:07Z
Depressing yes. And we are spending gosh knows how much saving the former VP Dick's worthless life. All I can be glad about regarding that is he didn't get a heart. They'd have to have created a place for it because he never had one before.
Is it Sarah T who just finished residency at Children's in Dallas? Just curious...
Wow, that's pretty bad, Dara.
Lucy, it's a Sarah F who became a Sarah P after marrying my friend.
Pediatricians make pretty good money. She should pull out her checkbook and pay for the treatment herself. Hypocrite.
She was still a resident. Idiot.
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